The long-proposed plan for a ‘military Schengen’ zone in Europe is already being implemented, according to an assessment in Foreign Policy (FP).
At the end of January, Germany, the Netherlands and Poland signed an agreement to create a military transport corridor between them. Siemtje Möller, Parliamentary State Secretary at the German Ministry of Defence, said the corridor would increase military mobility ‘on the way to a real military Schengen’.
It is not the first time that European politicians have floated the idea of adapting the existing visa-free movement of people and goods in the Schengen area to the movement of troops and military equipment throughout Europe, but the idea is now clearly gaining momentum.
The idea of a military Schengen first emerged after Russia’s annexation of Crimea. European military authorities are exploring the lessons of the Cold War, including military mobility.
But several experts, diplomats and military sources told FP that progress has been much slower than desired. “The liberalisation of the rules is agreed by everyone. But the problem is that we have been talking about it since 2015,” Tomasz Szatkowski, Poland’s permanent representative to NATO said.
Officials acknowledged that European countries have ‘a long way to go’ to effectively move their personnel and materiel.
The transition of anything related to a military mission in Europe is beset by obstacles ranging from bureaucratic hurdles to infrastructure gaps.
Baltic states fear no help in case of war
Urmas Paet, an Estonian MEP and vice-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, rated military mobilisation ‘3 out of 10’ and suggested that it could currently take ‘weeks or at least more than a week’ to send supplies to the Baltic states.
The FP stresses that the ‘paperwork’ is cumbersome. Different permits have to be obtained from different ministries in different countries, and sometimes from different regions within a country, it said, adding that most roads and bridges are built for civilian use and are unlikely to withstand the weight of heavy military equipment.
As the central European fuel pipeline does not extend to the eastern countries, longer delays in fuel supplies could also be a decisive factor. In addition, track gauges in the former Soviet states are different from European gauges, and transferring thousands of troops and equipment from one train to another in a wartime situation could add to the time required.
Mini-military Schengen for the Balkans planned
“Now I hear ministers in various organisations talking about it,” Lieutenant General Ben Hodges, a former NATO commander who was the first to advocate military Schengen and is believed to have coined the term, told FP at the recent Munich Security Conference.
The ability to act quickly in a crisis is a crucial part of military deterrence doctrine, Hodges stressed. “We need to have not just equipment and troops, but the ability to move quickly, to get spare parts in, to store fuel and ammunition, and the Russians need to see that we have that,” the officer said, noting that a force’s ability to mobilise and move quickly must be visible to the enemy and deter them from attacking in the first place.
While welcoming the agreement between Germany, the Netherlands and Poland as a ‘great start’, Hodges points out that many more such corridors are under discussion.
Bulgaria’s chief of staff, Emil Eftimov, for example, said the allies should prioritise a corridor from Alexandroupoli in Greece to Romania and across the Adriatic to Albania and northern Macedonia.
“They want corridors from Greece to Bulgaria to Romania. The aim of all these corridors is to have a smooth route in terms of infrastructure, but also to get customs and all the legal obstacles out of the way,” Hodges said.
Germany-Netherlands-Poland corridor as a model
The Germany-Netherlands-Poland corridor is the first of many planned to identify and resolve bottlenecks and possibly provide a template for future corridors.
A senior military source, who spoke to FP on condition of anonymity, said the corridor would address a number of issues.In peacetime, he said, it would also allow authorities to smooth federal processes, as each state in Germany has its own laws for troops or dangerous equipment passing through its territory. In wartime, he added, the corridor would be ‘much more than a road’.Explaining that a hundred thousand or more soldiers would be on the move in a crisis, the military source said: “They would need a place to stop, rest, access spare parts depots and fuel depots.In such a scenario, we would also need arrangements to deal with war refugees,” the military source said.
This is a daunting task even for the three nations. Paet added that defence is a ‘national capability’ and ‘countries share as much as they want to share’. Countries do not easily share details of critical infrastructure, such as the location and number of bridges that have a military load classification and can support the weight of heavy tanks.
The EU’s roads and railways – not fit for war
There is also a lack of accurate data on infrastructure. According to a 2021 report by the Centre for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), 90 per cent of European roads, 75 per cent of national roads and 40 per cent of bridges can carry vehicles classified as military, with a maximum load of 50 tonnes.
The Leopard and Abrams tanks, both of which have been used against Russia on the Ukrainian battlefield, are significantly heavier.
“The Leopard tank weighs about 75 tonnes, I think, and the Abrams is a bit heavier. Most of these tanks will be transported behind HETs (heavy equipment transporters) and each HET weighs about 15 to 20 tonnes. There won’t be just one tank on the road,” he said.
CEPA also notes that the combination of trucks, trailers and heavy tanks could be well in excess of 120 tonnes and considers the existing infrastructure to be largely unsuitable for military movements.
The EU recognises the need to fund dual-use infrastructure – civil and military – and has already approved funding for 95 such projects.
But the Polish ambassador and Hodges said they were concerned that funding for the EU’s infrastructure financing instrument, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF), had been cut from €6.5 billion to €1.7 billion.
German and French opposition to ‘investment in the East’
Rail Baltica, a transnational railway project funded by the CEF, plans to extend Europe’s rail network to the Baltic countries of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, and is due to be operational by 2030. But local news organisations are reporting concerns about funding.
Moreover, countries such as France, Belgium and even Germany are resisting the idea of investing in Eastern Europe to extend the Central European pipeline and using it for more general EU defence.
The European Defence Agency, which coordinates EU defence cooperation, is working on a common format for land and air mobility to standardise bureaucratic processes and simplify paperwork. But although it has been adopted by 25 member states, there is still reluctance among those that have not yet integrated these ‘technical rules’ into their national processes.
